Ashkelon’s wide boulevards and seafront promenade are deserted, the few souls who do venture out quickly make their way back indoors, listening out for the wail of rocket warning sirens that are now setting the uncertain rhythm of their lives.

Ashkelon, a coastal city of some 110,000 people, is reluctantly finding itself thrust onto the front line of the latest showdown in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, along with other cities unaccustomed to incoming fire such as Ashdod and Beersheva.

“This is all new to us,” said Avichai Levi.

Like other residents, he had never experienced anything like the rocket assault that has befallen their city since Israel’s massive air assault on Gaza began over the weekend. Rockets had fallen occasionally in the past, but only rarely. It had even been considered a safe refuge for residents of the border town of Sderot which for the past few years has borne the brunt of the attacks.

Levi awoke Tuesday morning to the sound of a rocket slamming into the construction site across the street from his parents’ apartment. The rocket, a Grad missile, killed a construction worker on the site and injured sixteen others. Levi, a manager at a local cell phone company, has moved back to his parents’ apartment along with his wife and newborn daughter, together with his three younger siblings. They take strength, they say, from being together.

His sister Helen Levi, 26, said it’s bewildering trying to make sense of what is going on around them. Looking out of the window she points south in the direction of Gaza where sometimes they can see plumes of smoke in the air from another Israeli air raid. In the background there are intermittent sounds of Israeli artillery firing across the border.

“Gaza, it’s right here,” she said, her voice trailing off. “I think we still don’t understand what’s happening so at some level we can still be optimistic because we don’t yet get the gravity of the situation.”

Avichai, sitting across from her on a dark leather couch offers, “We cannot know yet how this will all end. We don’t want to go into Gaza but I don’t think we’ll have much of a choice.”

Brewing talk of a ground invasion makes everyone nervous although this family, like many of their fellow Israelis, feel it is inevitable.

Eliyahu Shalalashvili, 49, on a lunch break from the Ashkelon grocery store where he works overseeing the stock room, spoke of his concerns for his twenty-year-old twin sons who are soldiers mobilized in different units along the Gaza border. Both are on the ready to become part of a possible ground mission.

“We don’t sleep at night,” he said of himself and his wife. “We pray that God will watch over them. I think we should go into Gaza but I would rather go in myself than send my children.”

The universal fear of parents for their children is part of almost every conversation in Ashkelon and the other southern Israeli towns and cities in range of Gaza rockets.

In her apartment overlooking the Mediterranean from where she and her daughter watch Israeli helicopters fly south towards Gaza, Leah Hassan tries to pass the time indoors, relieved at least that for the day her two young granddaughters, aged two and three are safe. Their parents took them to Tel Aviv to spend the day at the zoo.

Her nerves are frayed she admits, but she is steadfast in her support of the Israeli action in Gaza, calling it a war.

“I hope we’ll be able to go back to the old days but right now we are in the middle and have to absorb these blows.”

For now, she does not dare to leave the relative safety of her apartment, which like most homes in the city has a protective room built with reinforced concrete that serves as their bomb shelter.

Schools are closed as are malls and most stores and restaurants.

The one store at a strip mall in the city that was open and doing fast business was a shwarma restaurant. Its workers were busy wrapping up sandwiches for the slew of home deliveries that had been ordered. But the counter was also jammed with those who came in for lunch. When a siren went off most paused only briefly and then continued eating.

Sitting on a folding chair in the parking garage just off the kitchen, Shahar Ben-David, 30, was taking his own lunch break and assured a visitor that the garage was the safest place to be. He did not seem phased by the siren blasting once again or the rocket that had fallen in a soccer stadium across the road less than an hour earlier.

“What will we do? Run away?” he asked, taking a bite of his shwarma. “I need to work, who else will support my family?”

His wife and five-year-old daughter, meanwhile, were among those who had left the city, hoping to wait out the worst of the rocket fire from the safety of a Tel Aviv hotel.

Waiting for her lunch order to be ready, Lee Baron, an 18-year-old high school senior said she was not thinking about leaving.

“We cannot show fear because it will then give the other side strength,” she said.

Dina Kraft is a Tel Aviv-based journalist.

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This may be concealed good. One prays that these more extensive rocket attacks will wake up the Israeli appeasers and peaceniks to the reality. Their fellow citizens getting mortared continually didn’t make an impression on them. All Israelis are under threat, not just those who live near the border.

Israel’s siege of Gaza, largely unseen by the outside world because of Jerusalem’s refusal to allow humanitarian aid workers, reporters and photographers access to Gaza, rivals the most egregious crimes carried out at the height of apartheid by the South African regime. It comes close to the horrors visited on Sarajevo by the Bosnian Serbs. It has disturbing echoes of the Nazi ghettos of Lodz and Warsaw.

“This is a stain on what is left of Israeli morality,” I was told by Richard N. Veits, the former U.S. ambassador to Jordan who led a delegation from the U.S. Council for the National Interest Foundation to Gaza to meet Hamas leaders this past summer. “I am almost breathless discussing this subject. It is so myopic. Washington, of course, is a handmaiden to all this. The Israeli manipulation of a population in this manner is comparable to some of the crimes that took place against civilian populations fifty years ago.”

The U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, former Princeton University law professor Richard Falk, calls what Israel is doing to the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza “a crime against humanity.” Falk, who is Jewish, has condemned the collective punishment of the Palestinians in Gaza as “a flagrant and massive violation of international humanitarian law as laid down in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.” He has asked for “the International Criminal Court to investigate the situation, and determine whether the Israeli civilian leaders and military commanders responsible for the Gaza siege should be indicted and prosecuted for violations of international criminal law.”

Falk, while condemning the rocket attacks by the militant group Hamas, which he points out are also criminal violations of international law, goes on to say that “such Palestinian behavior does not legalize Israel’s imposition of a collective punishment of a life- and health-threatening character on the people of Gaza, and should not distract the U.N. or international society from discharging their fundamental moral and legal duty to render protection to the Palestinian people.”

“It is an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe that each day poses the entire 1.5 million Gazans to an unspeakable ordeal, to a struggle to survive in terms of their health,” Falk said when I reached him by phone in California shortly before he left for Israel. “This is an increasingly precarious condition. A recent study reports that 46 percent of all Gazan children suffer from acute anemia. There are reports that the sonic booms associated with Israeli overflights have caused widespread deafness, especially among children. Gazan children need thousands of hearing aids. Malnutrition is extremely high in a number of different dimensions and affects 75 percent of Gazans. There are widespread mental disorders, especially among young people without the will to live. Over 50 percent of Gazan children under the age of 12 have been found to have no will to live.”

Gaza now spends 12 hours a day without power, which can be a death sentence to the severely ill in hospitals. There are few drugs and little medicine, including no cancer or cystic fibrosis medication. Hospitals have generators but often lack fuel. Medical equipment, including one of Gaza’s three CT scanners, has been destroyed by power surges and fluctuations. Medical staff cannot control the temperature of incubators for newborns. And Israel has revoked most exit visas, meaning some of those who need specialized care, including cancer patients and those in need of kidney dialysis, have died. Of the 230 Gazans estimated to have died last year because they were denied proper medical care, several spent their final hours at Israeli crossing points where they were refused entry into Israel. The statistics gathered on children—half of Gaza’s population is under the age of 17—are increasingly grim. About 45 percent of children in Gaza have iron deficiency from a lack of fruit and vegetables, and 18 percent have stunted growth.

“It is macabre,” Falk said. “I don’t know of anything that exactly fits this situation. People have been referring to the Warsaw ghetto as the nearest analog in modern times.”

“There is no structure of an occupation that endured for decades and involved this kind of oppressive circumstances,” the rapporteur added. “The magnitude, the deliberateness, the violations of international humanitarian law, the impact on the health, lives and survival and the overall conditions warrant the characterization of a crime against humanity. This occupation is the direct intention by the Israeli military and civilian authorities. They are responsible and should be held accountable.”

The point of this Israeli siege, ostensibly, is to break Hamas, the radical Islamic group that was elected to power in 2007. But Hamas has repeatedly proposed long-term truces with Israel and offered to negotiate a permanent truce. During the last cease-fire, established through Egyptian intermediaries in July, Hamas upheld the truce although Israel refused to ease the blockade. It was Israel that, on Nov. 4, initiated an armed attack that violated the truce and killed six Palestinians. It was only then that Hamas resumed firing rockets at Israel. Palestinians have launched more than 200 rockets on Israel since the latest round of violence began. There have been no Israeli casualties.

“This is a crime of survival,” Falk said of the rocket attacks. “Israel has put the Gazans in a set of circumstances where they either have to accept whatever is imposed on them or resist in any way available to them. That is a horrible dilemma to impose upon a people. This does not alleviate the Palestinians, and Gazans in particular, for accountability for doing these acts involving rocket fire, but it also imposes some responsibility on Israel for creating these circumstances.”

Israel seeks to break the will of the Palestinians to resist. The Israeli government has demonstrated little interest in diplomacy or a peaceful solution. The rapid expansion of Jewish settlements on the West Bank is an effort to thwart the possibility of a two-state solution by gobbling up vast tracts of Palestinian real estate. Israel also appears to want to thrust the impoverished Gaza Strip onto Egypt. There are now dozens of tunnels, the principal means for food and goods, connecting Gaza to Egypt. Israel permits the tunnels to operate, most likely as part of an effort to further cut Gaza off from Israel.

“Israel, all along, has not been prepared to enter into diplomatic process that gives the Palestinians a viable state,” Falk said. “They [the Israelis] feel time is on their side. They feel they can create enough facts on the ground so people will come to the conclusion a viable state cannot emerge.”

The use of terror and hunger to break a hostile population is one of the oldest forms of warfare. I watched the Bosnian Serbs employ the same tactic in Sarajevo. Those who orchestrate such sieges do not grasp the terrible rage born of long humiliation, indiscriminate violence and abuse. A father or a mother whose child dies because of a lack of vaccines or proper medical care does not forget. A boy whose ill grandmother dies while detained at an Israel checkpoint does not forget. All who endure humiliation, abuse and the murder of family members do not forget. This rage becomes a virus within those who, eventually, stumble out into the daylight. Is it any wonder that 71 percent of children interviewed at a school in Gaza recently said they wanted to be a “martyr”?

The Israelis in Gaza, like the American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, are foolishly breeding the next generation of militants and Islamic radicals. Jihadists, enraged by the injustices done by Israel and the United States, seek to carry out reciprocal acts of savagery, even at the cost of their own lives. The violence unleashed on Palestinian children will, one day, be the violence unleashed on Israeli children. This is the tragedy of Gaza. This is the tragedy of Israel.

What a demonstration of what leftists are. People who are clueless and have no common sense at all. Except for the fact it is intentional blindness caused by their hate of Western civiliztion.

Hamas is well know as to who they are, what they want, and their respect for human life. If Germans were considered responsible for the death camps of the Nazis in WW II, then the people of Gaza have a grave level of personal responsibility for electing an thugocracy what wants to kill Jews.

Note the summary line: “like the American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan” they are “breeding the next generation of … Islamic radicals.”

Wrong and stupid, but interesting. Now that the election is over, the leftists who assured us they were not against the war on terror, just the “wrong war” – Iraq vs. Afghanistan – are free to show their true colors. And they will do so with increasing loudness. BO is going to have to back off his “let’s get the troops to Afghanistan” real quick or suffer the fate of Bush at the hands on his former worshippers.

Israel seeks to break the will of the Palestinians to destroy Israel and massacre the Jews, given half a chance. Such a genocidal will needs to be broken. Anyone who writes articles defaming the Jewish State for doing all it can to protect its citizens from this voracious, insatiable hunger to kill, kill, kill Jewish kids, is complicit not only in the act of supporting the Hamas Charter, but in actively and willingly and knowingly promoting its agenda. Fellow travelers of Hamas are just as culpable as than Hamas.

From Terry Glavin’s website:

“… the problem is worse than mere verbiage. In Iran, the people are told Israel’s genocide in Gaza reveals the nature of what the US leaders consider to be the human rights. And they are told Gaza Slaughter Condemned as Genocide. In the Saudi Gazette, we read: Stop Gaza Genocide. In the Gulf Times: Qatar has condemned the savage Israeli raids on Gaza and the genocide operations perpetrated by the Israeli forces against the Palestinian people.

On it goes like that, and one can to some degree excuse the “Arab street” for being so wrong about what’s happening in Gaza that not an eyebrow is raised when the word “genocide” gets chucked around so liberally. In countries with low literacy levels and no press freedom, people can’t be expected to do nuance very well. The Arab despotisms, and indeed most Islamic republics, consistently rank at the bottom of the 173-nation press freedom index maintained by Reporters Without Borders: “Free expression continues to be no more than a dream in Iraq (158th), Syria (159th), Libya (160th), Saudi Arabia (161st), the Palestinian Territories (163rd) and Iran (166th).”

Note the 163rd place ranking of the Palestinian territories, down from 82nd place six years ago. Rashid Shahin explains why.

But then there’s this: “The Palestinian resistance in Gaza has been retaliating to the Israeli genocide in Gaza and fired Sunday three rockets at Ashdod and Ashkelon, 40 km away from Strip.” That’s from the British magazine alJazeera, based in Manchester. And in the Toronto Star, Khaled Mouammar, president of the Canadian Arab Federation, says: “People are suffering and dying. There is an actual genocide taking place.” And in the same article, Sid Ryan, president of CUPE Ontario, says: “I want to condemn in the strongest terms the acts of genocide committed by Israel this weekend,” he said.

Michelle Sieff notices the same kind of deranged hyper-propaganda abroad in South Africa, and asks: “Isn’t Hamas the political entity which calls for the destruction of Israel in its charter?” She answers: “It is Hamas which has ‘genocidal intentions,’ not Israel.”

Go to Google News and type the words Gaza and genocide, and you will get 640 results, as of this afternoon. Type Gaza holocaust and you’ll get 1,007 results. A Google blog search for Gaza genocide turns up 77,501 results as of 2:20 p.m. today.

This is not just “verbiage.” This is not just about Muslims being driven half-mad by the bloodcurdling lies they read in their state-sponsored newspapers.

“former Princeton University law professor Richard Falk, calls what Israel is doing to the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza “a crime against humanity.””

“Israel has put the Gazans in a set of circumstances where they either have to accept whatever is imposed on them or resist in any way available to them. That is a horrible dilemma to impose upon a people. This does not alleviate the Palestinians, and Gazans in particular, for accountability for doing these acts involving rocket fire, but it also imposes some responsibility on Israel for creating these circumstances.”

My word. Israel is supposedly committing “a crime against humanity”, while Hamas is “Doing these acts involving rocket fire”? I think it’s high time for nations like Israel to make quasi-academics like Falk know the true measure of brutality. As most radicalized groups who eventually retire into the dustbin of history, Hamas is an impotent joke — and hopefully Israel will have the resolve to actually put an end to their hopeless cause. If a group is irrational enough to supposedly seek the annihilation of a vastly superior and highly militarized foe, a better strategy would be non-violent demographic conquest. Heathens, ever last one of them.

One must go to the underlying assumptions to learn why people take what seem to be illogical positions with regard to Israel. In our case here, if the underlying assumption is that Israel has no right to exist, then no action on the part of the Israeli government to defend its citizens is acceptable. When the underlying assumptions are rigid rejection of the Jews’ right to a state, then middle-of-the-road, split-the-difference suggestions don’t make any sense either. In our case, saying that a cessation of hostilities from both sides would result in peace is unacceptable, since the only peace that will suit is the disappearance of Israel. To such people that hold that Israel has no right to its existence, that Israel has spent hundreds of millions of dollars developing and acquiring weapons that limit collateral injury or death to non-combatants is irrelevant, since Israel has no right to weapons at all.

Hamas has vowed to wipe Israel off the face of the map. Israel has let them get closer to the goal. And the world, for the most part, has cheered Hamas on. The left complains about the siege of Gaza. The siege is a joke. A real siege would have starved them out years ago.

The Israeli government is guilty of not protecting Israeli citizens. They should do that no matter what anyone thinks.

I wonder how the “settlers” of Ashkelon feel now? Are they, and the rest of the settlers, you know, from Tel Aviv and Haifa, getting the point their compatriots from Judea, Samaria, and the ones who were cleansed from Gaza, tried to get acros all these years?